Table Top Racing Launches on PS Vita Today

Hi! Nick Burcombe here from Playrise Digital, the team behind Table Top Racing on PS Vita. You may have seen my blog post a couple of weeks ago — hello again, if that’s the case! Table Top Racing is out today, so I’m back to show you guys the brand new launch trailer…

As it’s launch day, I thought I’d give you guys a few tactical tips before you start revving your engines.

First and foremost, make sure you upgrade your car as you progress — otherwise you won’t keep up with the competition. Things get even more interesting when you start experimenting with Weapon-Wheels. In conjunction with the power-ups, the wheel weapons will give you a real strategic advantage, so think carefully about your selection before each race.

There are 17 fully upgradeable cars, all of which come with some cool skins. You start off with a choice between the Whippy Kai-Yay! Ice Cream Van or the Hippy Bathday Campervan, but in no time at all you’ll be upgrading through to the likes of Rally Cars, suped-up pick-up trucks and hyper-cars like the Veloceratti and the Baguetti Carb Injection — we had a lot of fun with the car names.

The on-track intensity increases once you start unlocking some of those higher level Championships. Once you start exploring the Special Events and applying what you’ve learnt about the Weapon-Wheels, you’ll soon discover those three start challenges that seem impossible are achievable with a bit of lateral thinking.

We hope you’ll have a blast playing the ultimate version of Table Top Racing on PlayStation Vita. We can’t wait to start hearing some feedback from you.

Its the love child of Micromahcine and Mario Karts, with a pinch of one of my old PSOne title, Wipeout thrown in – you’ll sense it if you were a fan of the PSOne versions – even though it’s a very different game :)

Ignore my comment. I believe I may have had a misconception. With a name like “Table Top Racing” and after viewing the video above, I thought the game was/is AR Play. I have had problems with the AR Play in dark rooms as I usually only have time to play games in the evening.

The Vita version has both Ad-Hoc and Internet multiplayer – there’s no multi-player in Andorid at all. The Vita one also has double the polygon count for the scenery. Plus, with analogue control sticks you have manual control over the the brake and acceleration (its auto-accelerate on Android). You can also use the center portion of the rear touch panel to “glance back” and see where the competition are.

We have the “mario Kart” above and behind view, then a “Closer” version but still 3rd person and then there’s the ultra-hardcore Retro camera…not recommended if youre trying to ace the game. LOL. We don’t have a “1st person” or bumper camera because of the use of weapons – you can’t judge when to use the defensive weapons if you can see who is around you. :)

To all the guys commenting that they are going to get it – thank you – all of you – it means a lot to have support like this. Keep firing the questions in and I promise to answer them where I can. I’ve got to duck out for something to eat now (7:15pm UK time) but fear not, I’ll respond to all your queries over the coming days.

I just noticed you guys don’t have screenshots up on the PSN store. If I hadn’t found out about it here on PSBlog, I probably would have passed right over it for this reason. It’s a nice looking game! Show it off! :)

Doesn’t anyone realize he is the creator of the one and only Wipeout?!

I have been a huge fan of the Wipeout series since it’s debut on the PSX. Actually, even before that, if you count it’s CGI mock up on the movie Hackers. ;)

I have to say I’ve really enjoyed Table Top Racing on the iPod and can’t wait to play it on the PS Vita since it will be much better with real buttons.

This and Jeff Minter’s TxK have made my purchase of the Vita worth it and I thank you!
Seriously, anyone who remembers Micro Machines with any ounce of fondness will love this.
It will look gorgeous on the Vita as well.

Wow.. this game is a mess. I’ve played for around 10 minutes so far and have encountered two annoying bugs. 1st, I checked out the garage and after checking out some nice cars, the game refused to let me make any selections or exit the menu. Had to force close and re-open app. Checked out garage again and it worked fine. Weird… 2nd problem, I entered championship mode and the game forced me to drive backwards. Changed the camera modes a bit and it didn’t help.. restarted the race a few times and the car flickered a bit and went into a normal driving mode.. fun stuff…. :\

Sadly, i can’t log in at the moment on my “author” account but I am Nick Burcombe (logged in on my personal account).

+Crosaith – we’ve never seen any bugs in the front end menu. You can only chose the cars once you have the cash to buy them or your have unlocked them by completing the championships. Secondly, the “drive backwards” you’re experiencing is the fact that you are touching the middle portion of the rear touch pad – this is “glance back” camera and so if you move your fingers to the edges or off the pad you should have a normal view. We purposely didn’t make the whole rear pad the rear view because it was too easy to catch by accident, but the middle 60% will give you the look back and so 20% at the sides shouldn’t affect the camera view.

Hope that helps. Sorry you didn’t have a great first impression. I’ll bring up the menu thing with the team – I don’t recall this ever coming up though.

+SpooNManX – kind words (even the Q-bert bit) but, credit where it’s due – there is always a great team behind a great game. And Psygnosis/Studio Liverpool was a truly great place to work back in the early days of PSX development.

@shadow71, I was going to say that Vita games have digital manuals, which you access from the page that pops up after tapping on the game’s bubble, it’s one of the icons on the top. Then I tried it on the demo version. It’s 6 pages of legal stuff, health warning and such, not a single word on how to play!

CONTROLLER SETUP
The left Analogue stick is steering, the right Analogue stick is Accelerate and Brake. Alternatively you can use the the dpad for steering and X for Accelerate and I think you can use either Square or Circle to brake. The camera can be cycled on Triangle. The rear touch panel only does the rear view on the center portion of the panel – this is so you can hold the Vita without having to worry about touching the edges of the panel by accident.

You can use any combination of analogue or digital – whatever is comfortable.

Top right shoulder fires “Pick ups”, Top left shoulder fire “Weapon Wheels”. The “Jump” comes from the secondary weapon system, the “Weapon Wheels”. You can find them in the garage. Each Wheel has a specific function, be it earning coins or jumping shortcuts. More below.